A resource and viewpoint from Darwin Ecosystem on managing information overload and enabling both relevant content discovery and content curation on the Web.
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Real-time awareness means identifying what is happening in relation to a specific topic of interest. The immense volume of information on the Web in relation to almost any given topic requires the visualization of emerging patterns to understand what is going on. With this understanding, Internet users can achieve effective content discovery in a broad context by visualizing both emerging patterns and what is important.
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All of us have areas of interest and expertise that we wish to continue developing. We want to know everything that is going on in relation to that topic. More importantly, we want to be sure we are not missing anything important. The need to be aware of what is going on is even more critical for businesses. Relevance is more time sensitive and ends up having an impact on the bottom line. The relationship between information and revenue is not a direct one, but the costs of a missed opportunity or an unanticipated threat can be huge. What differentiates successful professionals is their ability to take action before competitors so as to mitigate a risk or act upon an opportunity.
The volume of information on the Web is overwhelming. With more than 5 billion mobile phones (70% of the world’s population) and 2 billion Internet users, the number of posts is staggering. Everyday 200 million tweets are shared and 70,000 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube. And this is only the beginning since Web content now doubles every 2 years. Social media has revolutionized the way information is published and shared. Social media has also become a foundation of information discovery and consumption.
Web-Awareness, a condition where one is effectively aware of “what’s going on” regarding a particular topic or subject, is an ever-growing challenge as a result information overload. It’s really hard to keep up with the massive volume of information that is available as a result of the increasing ease of publishing to the Web. There is a positive side, however, to the astronomical growth of information on the Web - much more information can help provide new insights and perspectives on topics that are often thought to be mastered. In order to help deal with the volume of information, there are an increasingly growing number of tools available today. Understanding the underlying premise of such tools is important in determining how effective they are in providing real awareness.
For professionals who need to stay aware of new developments regarding their topics of interest in order to do their job, information overload is an increasingly serious problem. While “information overload” has existed for years, it is becoming increasingly acute – the volume of information published on the Web now doubles every two years. This growth will only continue and the difficulty of staying on top of the flow of information will only get worse. In parallel, “information anxiety”, the fear that you are missing something terribly important, will trouble professionals who need to stay up-to-date on Web information in order to do their jobs.
Web-awareness is a state of being where you know about everything happening on the Web about a specific topic of interest. It involves being informed about new developments, and also comprehending their causes, evolution and implications in the overall picture. It has become very difficult to stay on top of new content and remaining aware seems almost impossible. However, the current volumes of information present new opportunities for web-awareness.
At 7:48am at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the US Pacific Fleet was caught by surprise by the first of two waves of bombers, torpedo bombers and fighters launched from aircraft carriers of the Japanese Imperial Navy.
With the unprecedented levels of published information, it is very difficult for Internet users to stay up to date on what matters to them. This situation is especially dramatic for information professionals that must remain aware of new happenings in order to stay ahead of the curve. Content curation is the process of picking the most relevant and valuable content for a specific audience. There is an important human component to content discovery and curation because only users can fully understand the context of the information they are working with. Technology can support content curation by computing large volumes of information on behalf of the user by helping to discover new pieces of Web information.
Much has been written about the need for better managing information overload on the Web. This need largely is occurring because of the rise in user-generated content. Computerworld reported on an IDC study that predicts we will see a 50 times increase in the world’s data in the next ten years leading to greater information overload. In 2011 alone they report that 1.8 zettabytes (or 1.8 trillion gigabytes) of data will be created. This is the equivalent to every U.S. citizen writing 3 tweets per minute for 26,976 years.
Listening to what customers are saying is a hot topic today. Actually, it’s always been “hot”. It’s just harder to do ever since regular face-to-face communication with customers went the way of the public phone booth.